‘Suicide bomber poisoned into terrorism in Pak’
London, July 14
The uncle of one of the four suspected suicide bombers of Pakistan origin, who rocked London on Thursday afternoon, has said some radical groups in Pakistan might have brainwashed their ward to take to terror acts.

Body scanner that can detect suicide bombers
A revolutionary new body scanner which could enable the police and security forces to detect suicide bombers entering rail and tube stations has been developed by a British company.

10 bodies found in Iraq
Baghdad, July 14
Security forces have found the bodies of 10 men, handcuffed, blindfolded and shot in the head, the police said today.

NASA looking into fuel sensor problem
Cape Canaveral, July 14
NASA engineers searched today for the cause of a fuel sensor problem that kept space shuttle Discovery from flying, delaying the first shuttle mission since the 2003 Columbia accident.

‘Sarkar’ ruffles UAE movie buffs
Dubai, July 14
Within a week after its release in the UAE, Amitabh Bachchan’s latest flick ‘Sarkar’ has triggered a controversy, with many moviegoers taking a strong exception to the oblique depiction of its national hero as a ‘hitman’ in the movie.

$ 11 b fraud gets Ebbers 25 years in jail
New York, July 14
Former WorldCom chief Bernard Ebbers received the stiffest sentence yet in the recent spate of corporate scandals — a term tough enough to reduce the once-swaggering CEO to tears in the courtroom.
A federal Judge sentenced the 63-year-old ex-CEO to 25 years in prison yesterday for orchestrating the $11 billion accounting fraud that toppled the telecommunications firm three years ago.— AP

London, July 14
The uncle of one of the four suspected suicide bombers of Pakistan origin, who rocked London on Thursday afternoon, has said some radical groups in Pakistan might have brainwashed their ward to take to terror acts. According to family sources, Shehzad Tanweer, who blew off the underground train at Aldgate, had gone to his home country last year to learn the Quran, and might have been indoctrinated into extremism by different groups.

Bashir Ahmed (65), Shehzad's uncle, said if he had known that his nephew was involved with any fanatical group, he would have put a stop to it.

"He went to Pakistan but it was to learn about his religion. It was not a terror camp. But he might have been in an environment where different political views must have been discussed and pressure put on young people to get involved in various groups. He was just a good British boy when he was growing up, a young sports fan from a good family. It is hard to accept what must have happened to him," the Daily Mail quoted the uncle as saying.

Indicating that his nephew might have been influenced by some terror groups in Pakistan, he said: "We believe radical groups must have secretly been coming round importing extreme ideas into the community. Shehzad would not have been capable of this bombing unless his mind had been poisoned." Ahmed further said his nephew was cool and calm and that the family had been left "shattered" by the news that the 22-year-old was a suicide bomber.

"The family is shattered. This is a terrible thing. It wasn't him. It must have been forces behind him. He was a very kind and calm person. He was respected by everyone. His parents were very proud of him and very pleased he was taking his religious studies seriously when many parents are worried about their children going to the pub," he said.

Denying reports that Shehzad travelled to Afghanistan to take part in terrorist training camps, Ahmed said: "There is no way, I have seen his passport."

Meanwhile, a report in The Sun said like his fellow bomber Hasib Hussain, Tanweer too had a brush with the law last year when he was cautioned for disorderly conduct.

The report also said people who knew him were shocked at his involvement in the bombings. One of his former school friends said: "Nobody can believe it. When he was at school, his hero was Mike Tyson, not Osama bin Laden. He was quite religious but had little interest in politics. He loved sport. He was cricket mad and a good fast bowler. He loved boxing and American wrestling. He played football for the school and was brilliant at the triple jump and long jump."

Another ex-pupil from Wortley High School in Leeds said: "He would have been the last person you would say would get involved in something like this. He was kind, polite and respectful at school. He was super-intelligent. We used to struggle to get good grades but he seemed to find it all easy. His family was very strict about him doing his homework. He was a really quiet lad but also had a great sense of humour and was always smiling. He was a teacher's dream. He always got on with any work he was set and was always extremely polite."
— ANI

London, July 14
Millions of people across Europe today joined Londoners in paying a silent tribute to the victims of last week’s bombing here which killed at least 52 persons and injured 700.

London buses and cabs stopped and workers put down their tools as the two-minute silence was announced at noon.

Britain came to a standstill during the two-minute silence with workers leaving offices and coming to streets to pay tributes to the victims.

Queen Elizabeth II, along with Prince Charles and his wife Camilla, joined the people across the country in paying the silent tribute.

Prime Minister Tony Blair marked the silence at the garden of his official residence at 10-Downing Street while lawmakers broke off debates in the House of Commons and the House of Lords to remember the victims of the bombings.

London Mayor Ken Livingstone had said earlier that he wanted people “to show their complete defiance of the terrorists” by observing the silence.
— PTI

A revolutionary new body scanner which could enable the police and security forces to detect suicide bombers entering rail and tube stations has been developed by a British company.

The equipment, known as the millimetre wave camera, is already in production for a number of overseas security agencies and could be deployed in the UK if the threat to the travelling public increases.

QinetiQ, the company behind the technology, has tested the equipment at Gatwick airport and the Channel Tunnel terminal in Calais where it has been used to screen lorries for asylum seekers and illegal immigrants.

The technology was originally developed by the British Government's Defence Evaluation Research Agency, the forerunner of QinetiQ, to help soldiers and pilots see through fog and cloud. But it has now been adapted to see through a person's clothing to detect whether they are carrying guns, explosives and even biological weapons.

The device works by passively detecting naturally recurring radiation as it reflects off materials such as metal or high explosives. Because these materials reflect 100 per cent of natural radiation whereas the body only reflects 30 per cent, it enables the scanner to detect a person's actual body shape, foiling attempts to conceal items underneath clothing.

The scanner can then either give an analogue warning from green to red or it can be linked to an imaging system to give an actual "see through" picture of the person and any device strapped to them or contained in a rucksack.

The device tested at Gatwick was a "people portal" through which passengers walked but QinetiQ has also developed a stand-off device with a range of up to 100 feet which can either be hand-held or mounted on a tripod and looks like a surveyor's theodolite.

The equipment costs between (pounds sterling)200,000 and (pounds sterling)500,000 per device, depending on the format used, which would make it enormously expensive to equip the entire London Underground or the above ground rail network. It would also slow down journey times even though it is three times faster than conventional airport security scanners with the capacity to handle up to 50 persons a minute.

Concerns about personal privacy can be overcome using a computer graphics overlay which only highlights the parts of the body which the security forces are interested in.

Baghdad, July 14
Security forces have found the bodies of 10 men, handcuffed, blindfolded and shot in the head, the police said today.

The bodies of men, aged between 25 and 35, were found last night in the Maamel area on the eastern outskirts of Baghdad, said police Lt. Osama Adnan. They had no identity papers, he added.

The discovery occurred amid increasing tension between the country’s Sunni Muslim minority and the Shia-dominated government of Abraham al-Jaafari. It was not clear if the dead men were Sunnis or Shias, who makes the majority in Iraq.
— AP

Cape Canaveral, July 14
NASA engineers searched today for the cause of a fuel sensor problem that kept space shuttle Discovery from flying, delaying the first shuttle mission since the 2003 Columbia accident.

The US space agency called off yesterday’s much-anticipated launch of Discovery less than three hours before the scheduled mid-afternoon liftoff. The next attempt could be on Saturday at the earliest, but first NASA must figure out why the fuel sensor malfunctioned, and that could take time.

Engineers’ trouble-shooting meetings at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida began early today, with a closed-door gathering of mission managers set for midday. Even after that, a launch timetable may not be clear.

If Discovery fails to launch this month, the next window of opportunity begins September 9. Any substantial delay after that could threaten the construction of the orbiting station and perhaps the long-term plan to return humans to the moon and eventually to Mars and beyond.
— Reuters

Dubai, July 14
Within a week after its release in the UAE, Amitabh Bachchan’s latest flick ‘Sarkar’ has triggered a controversy, with many moviegoers taking a strong exception to the oblique depiction of its national hero as a ‘hitman’ in the movie.

The film has ruffled the feathers of movie buffs after they found the character of an Olympic gold medalist in the movie, hired from Dubai to finish off the underworld don played by Bachchan, closely resembling international shooter Shaikh Ahmad Mohammad Hasher Al Maktoum.

Maktoum, a member of Dubai’s ruling family, is UAE’s national hero after he won for the country its first gold medal in the men’s double trap shooting event at the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games.

“It’s outrageous. How can they depict a UAE gold medalist as a hitman? The movie should be scrapped immediately,” a moviegoer was quoted as saying by the Gulf News.

“Amitabh Bachchan was appointed ambassador of the Dubai Shopping Festival this year. But instead of promoting Dubai, he has acted in a movie which shows Dubai, particularly its national hero in a bad light,” another viewer said.

“We are contemplating watching the translated version of the movie for any objectionable scenes,” an officer handling censorship issues told the daily.

The Ram Gopal Varma directed movie, which was released in India on July 1 amidst much fanfare, is loosely inspired by Francis Ford Copolla’s classic ‘Godfather.’
— PTI

India and Pakistan have decided to appoint financial consultants with the aim of entering into a bilateral framework agreement on the India-Iran-Pakistan Gas Pipeline project by December, 2005. Both sides are looking forward to starting work on the project in 2006, with the gas supplies expected to begin from 2010. The proposed pipeline route is from Assaluyah Port in Iran to Barmer district in Rajasthan via Pakistan.